It has been recognized that the levitation of objects without contacting them, as by the use of acoustic, magnetic, and electrostatic forces, has considerable potential value in the production of objects that are substantially free of contaminants. Such processes are especially promising for use under substantially zero gravity environments (in outer space) in processes such as melting and quenching metallurgical samples, forming nuclear reactor fusion targets, and the growing of crystals. The processes often involve moving the levitated object, so that techniques are required to control object movements within a chamber. U.S. Pat. No. 3,882,732 by Wang et al., describes a method for moving an acoustically levitated object, by moving the walls of the chamber in which the object lies while varying the levitating frequency to account for the change in chamber dimension. Object-moving techniques which did not require the movement of chamber walls, could permit simpler and more versatile object movements.